Several recent headlines indicate that food prices will continue their swift climb upward. These troubling new reports show that agriculture production and stored grains are critically low and experts are now predicting food shortages on a grand scale.

We are back to recession economics and rapidly heading toward a deeper, longer “Third Depression.” With all recent economic indicators setting new record lows and deficits at record highs, this ship is only going one way folks, down, down to Chinatown. This WTC-Building 7-style-controlled-demolition of the U.S. economy has long been engineered by the borderless banksters and has been set in the same way to collapse at a free-fall rate. With all of the manufactured confusion it may be difficult to know where best to invest your limited assets, but it seems to be clear that Food is on the march.

There were several trend forecasters and financial firms predicting upwards of $200/barrel of oil before the Gulf oil gusher. The “analysts” said this would occur because of the perception of scarcity and a weakening dollar. The oil disaster and the subsequent outrage at Big Oil will surely take care of selling the perception of scarcity, while the Federal Reserve and Congress will surely take care of weakening the dollar.

We’ve seen this Beta test before when oil prices reached their peak of $147 in 2008 sending the price of food to the stratosphere. Food staples like rice nearly tripled in six months and at times increased 50% in just two weeks, primarily because of record oil prices and a weak dollar in 2008. During this run-up on prices, big box stores like Sam’s Club and Costco were rationing the number of bags of rice customers could buy. You can bet that Food Crisis Beta 2.010 will be far more severe.

This third factor of actual Food Scarcity, coupled with high oil prices and a feeble dollar, will multiply the severity of increasing food prices. Whether this scarcity is being engineered to further cull the population or is a genuine imbalance in supply and demand is not important. The fact is that this reality is playing out in the matrix. Being aware of this triple-threat to food costs creates an opportunity to soften the recessionary blow, and perhaps offer some economic freedom from those who would like to reduce us all to serfdom.

You don’t have to be an End Times survivalist to believe that storing food is pragmatic. Everyone with expendable cash can and should design a good food storage and rotation system and buy bulk food as an investment — in addition to creating self-sufficiency. Many rationalists are touting guns, ammo, and gold as good small-scale investments given the despicable agenda unfolding in our matrix. Certainly those are critical investments in an economy dwindling down to the rationing of necessity, but not everyone is into guns or can afford bundles of gold. And gold, at the end of the day, can only be traded for necessity.

These recent food alerts seem to indicate that food may be the best short-term investment for the “Average Joe.” It’s simple: if the retail cost of rice doubles, as it did in 2008, then you (the investor) make 100% return in something that’s immediately tangible and usable. It’s time to pay the tax penalty for cashing out your mediocre “I-bought-in-to-the-American-Dream” 401K and invest in Food!

The Hydra-like creature, Goldman Sachs, has surfaced from the Gulf oil volcano.

Illinois-based Nalco Corporation is responsible for the Corexit 9500 chemical dispersant highlighted by experts as being 4 times more toxic than the oil that is flowing into the Gulf. Scientists in congressional hearings added that the dispersant is more toxic than other similar dispersant on the market. Naturally, whenever a major disaster takes place — especially when major, society-altering solutions are being offered — one needs to follow the trail of money and power to see who benefits. Sure enough, a casual search of Nalco’s Web site reveals their company history; it leads right to the doorstep of Goldman Sachs.

Nalco seems to have started in 1928 Chicago and became immediately involved in both the oil industry and water treatment facilities. 1982 seems to have been a massive turning point for the company as their Web site states, “ORS-419 is used in the tires of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Nalco product is the only non-silicone product of its type on the market approved by the space shuttle tire’s manufacturer.” Thereafter, things really seem to have taken off as shown here:

1983: Nalco breaks ground for a new 300,000-square-foot trio of headquarters buildings in Naperville, representing an investment totaling $90 million.1984: Nalco introduces the PORTA-FEED® reusable container system, the most advanced liquid chemical handling system yet introduced.1985: Nalco leads the chemical industry in the development of CAER (Community Awareness and Emergency Response), a forerunner of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 and the CMA Responsible Care® initiative. 1986: Nalco consolidates groups from the Energy Chemicals Division and Oil Field Services Division to form a new Petroleum Chemicals Division to be headquartered in Sugar Land. The new Petroleum Chemicals Division will include Visco Chemicals, Refinery Process Chemicals, Additives, Adomite Chemicals and Gas and Oil Handling Chemicals Groups. 1989: Sales top $1 billion.

Then, in 1994 Nalco joined forces with Exxon Chemical to announce the formation of a new alliance “Nalco/Exxon Energy Chemicals, L.P. to provide products and services to all facets of the petroleum and natural gas industries.”

Another name change occurred in 2001 when the company became Ondeo Nalco. Finally, in 2003, we learn who has taken the reins to lead us into the present. As their site states: “The Blackstone Group, Apollo Management L. P. and Goldman Sachs Capital Partnersbuy Ondeo Nalco.”

Yet, Goldman Sachs is far too gluttonous a creature to be happy with administering the profits from the physical fallout of the Gulf disaster. The kings of the carbon market — yes, that market that trades nothing but air — have not been having an easy time of it pushing man-made global warming. In the Gulf, however, they have their cohort, Barack Obama, well positioned to steer the pirate ship back on course. It was Obama who helped fund the carbon program from its inception after all. Right on cue, Obama’s e-mail campaign is launched to exploit suffering at the behest of his corporate controllers.

We are living in a full-blown international corporate command and control system where even the most basic rescue efforts are in the hands of proven pirates. It also has become clear that the pirate flotilla is owned by Goldman Sachs . . . and the president of the United States is the captain.

Debtors’ prisons have a sordid history that was thought to be best left behind in Medieval Europe and in Charles Dickens’ fictionalized accounts of the 19th-century hellholes of Victorian England. America was not to be outdone, debtors’ prisons were widespread in the United States as well, and stories of the conditions in New York’s debtors’ prisons could make one question if repayment of debts was really the purpose; violent criminals were much better clothed and fed. In fact, history shows that terror and slavery have always had a close relationship with debt, and it follows a path from the Romans right through to 17th century England, and into America from English common law. However, America chose to abolish her debtors’ prisons a full 36 years before England; first in New York in 1831, and by 1833 the rest of the America had followed.(1)

Now, debtors’ prisons seem to be making a comeback in America. A recent article in the Star Tribune in Minnesota titled, “In jail for being in debt,” exposes the growing number of citizens going to jail at the behest of banks and a welcoming judicial system. They write:

“It’s not a crime to owe money, and debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.”

In our modern era of debt servitude, a PR Push has been designed to reintroduce a serious discussion of debtors’ prisons as a sound solution. What goes beyond alarming is that the full-fledged return of debtors’ prisons might be seen as both appropriately terrifying, as well as a profitable investment opportunity and politically sound decision to be made by state governments strugglingwith their own looming bankruptcies, and a Federal government struggling politically with the concept of a jobless recovery that is not materializing.

A de facto debtors’ prison has already been largely accepted in the case of “deadbeat” parents when a failure to pay child support puts them in civil contempt of court. It is this civil contempt charge that is now beginning to take on an expanded definition to include those who owe for much smaller infractions. When a court order to pay a debt is issued and ignored, it then qualifies as a civil contempt of court. At that point, the judge becomes a literal dictator with the ability to imprison a person indefinitely for the violation. The Constitution explicitly prohibits incarceration for failure to pay debts, but it is the violation of a court order that gives judges free rein to impose draconian punishments. In this way, an end-run around the Constitution can become frighteningly commonplace.(2)

America already has a record-high ratio of people in prison, with no signs of the trend reversing as private corporations like Wackenhut Corporation, referred to as a “Free Market in Human Misery,” have long been enlisted to turn government directives into shareholder profit. One might even deign to call it blatant fascism in its purest form, as government legislation leads offenders directly into private company coffers. The prison-industrial complex has already capitalized on government actions like The War on Drugs. A prime example is how The California Correctional Peace Officers Association helped fuel the prison-building boom as a cozy relationship was established on Capitol Hill through influence peddling.(3)

Profiting from the suffering of the poor while bailouts and bonuses await the over-leveraged banksters, car companies, and state governments, sets up a prison-industrial complex with a class warfare component that is the domestic mirror of the military-industrial complex sent abroad. This domestic prison system seems to be the only industry left to build upon, and it is here that things become truly frightening. For the federally-owned prison system complex, Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR), more incarceration means a growing supply of cheap labor and a skewing of unemployment numbers, as these inmates are often doing jobs they couldn’t even find if they were job hunting on the outside. But it is the private prison system, with its web fully woven throughout the U.S. government, that stands to profit the most from the return of debtors’ admission.(4)

The largest private prison conglomerate in the U.S. is Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which controls more than 47% of all private prison and jail beds nationwide and is able to produce a 13-15% return annually on new real estate investments. Wackenhut (now subsumed into G4S, the largest security company in the world) was of course started by an FBI agent, George Wackenhut, who is famous for developing millions of dossiers on America’s “potential subversives” in the sixties, and was exposed as being an integral player within the shadow CIA.(5)

These major security conglomerates are at the top of a growing pyramid of for-profit, international detention center operators that has Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs simply fawning over the solid, long-term investment potential. Similar to war, when there is a profit to be made off of incarceration, only more incarceration can be expected to follow. The U.S. government certainly seems to be working hard to ensure that the numbers of poor continue to increase, as they are well aware that that programs designed to help the downtrodden are an abject failure every time. Furthermore, the massive government debts that must be repaid directly into the hands of the Federal Reserve-led banking cabal must lead us to an inescapable conclusion: More money is to be made from slavery in the United States, than from freedom.

Other Articles Cited

1. Jill Lepore, “I.O.U. – How We Used to Treat Our Debtors,” The New Yorker (April 13, 2009): 35.

Debt Spreading ‘Like a Cancer’: Black Swan Author

The economic situation today is drastically worse than a couple years ago, and the euro is doomed as a concept, Nassim Taleb, professor and author of the bestselling book “The Black Swan,” told CNBC on Thursday.

CNBC.com

Nassim Taleb

“We had less debt cumulatively (two years ago), and more people employed. Today, we have more risk in the system, and a smaller tax base,” Taleb said.

“Banks balance sheets are just as bad as they were” two years ago when the crisis began and “the quality of the risks hasn’t improved,” he added.

The root of the crisis over the past couple of years wasn’t recession, but debt, which has spread “like a cancer,” according to Taleb, who is now relived that public attention has shifted to debt, instead of growth.

The world needs to prepare itself for austerity, he warned. “We need to slash debt. Unfortunately, that’s the only solution,” Taleb said.

]]>https://rulersofusall.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/austerity-programs-doomed-to-spread-from-eurozone-to-u-s/feed/3rulersofusallNassim TalebBankruptcy Records Continue to be Broken Without the True Numbershttps://rulersofusall.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/bankruptcy-records-continue-to-be-broken-without-the-true-numbers/
https://rulersofusall.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/bankruptcy-records-continue-to-be-broken-without-the-true-numbers/#respondWed, 09 Jun 2010 18:07:28 +0000http://rulersofusall.wordpress.com/?p=946]]>Only a fraction of those in need file for bankruptcy

Bankruptcy filings are nearing the record 2 million of 2005, when a new law took effect that was aimed at curbing abuse of the system. Filings could reach 1.7 million this year, says law professor Robert Lawless, but few experts believe that debtors are now gaming the system.

Instead, concern exists about a growing number of Americans who need bankruptcy protection but cannot get any benefit from it or simply cannot afford to file. As their financial problems worsen, that hurts everyone because it can hinder the economic turnaround.

“It’s shocking that we are back to the 2005 level,” says Katherine Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. “And the filing rate doesn’t even begin to count the depth of the financial pain.”

Bankruptcy laws changed in 2005 because filings skyrocketed and credit card companies and banks wanted to weed out deadbeat borrowers. The law made it harder — more expensive and more restrictive — for individuals to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which erases most debts.

Instead of seeking protection from bankruptcy, a number of debt-laden Americans have gone into a “shadow economy,” or informal bankruptcy, according to some experts.